That Which Is Lacking

    He wiped the sleep accumulated crust from his eyelashes and yawned over his first cup of coffee. He’d slept late and long on this, his day off, and felt refreshed. The weariness of the work week fallen away. “The sun rises, the sun sets,” he thought “and in between I need to write.

    Other things needed to be done as well, of course. It was his day off from work, yes, but there was still work to be done. Laundry and grocery shopping. Vacuuming and dusting. The cats would need fed and the litter box cleaned. All the daily and disgusting chores of ordinary life. Still he was writing and that was a pleasantness to be enjoyed.

    He was writing and had written much already, the bulk of the project already completed, but his editor wanted more. Always more. Of the writing of books there is no end.

    But his notebook was lined and crossed with false starts and thoughts going nowhere. Dangling participles and sentence fragments. A void of returning problems. Problem. There was only ever one problem. All editorial effort, all creative confusion came down to this: There is nothing new...

    The blank page

    He flipped through the pages of his notes, looking for a way in. A way into the words.

    “Mysterious alarm…” No.

    “Toxic potency…” Not quite.

    “Rumpled heartbeat…” No. “Rumpled heartbeat? What is that?” He crossed it out and wrote again. “Rapid heartbeat…” But still no.

    His cell phone rang, interrupting his lack of progress, a call from his editor. “Good morning, Lester,” he answered. “It’s a bit early to be calling to check on me, isn’t it?”

    “No, no, no” the editor pleaded. “You misunderstand. I don’t want to… But if you could give me an idea, an estimate… how many pages?”

    He sighed. “That which is lacking, Lester, cannot be counted.”